Today I received one of the most amusing packages I've ever received during my time with the CTF.

The package came from Jack Dalgliesh, the whistleblower at the heart of the Crocus scandal. Some of you may remember seeing a recent CBC story with Dalgliesh's recent comments on the scandal.

In the package Dalgliesh provided to the CTF (and every MLA) is a number of interesting documents - a mock interview with Free Press columnist Dan Lett, emails to Tim Sale and one to the Securities Commission.

But what really made me chuckle was a list of 156 novels that Dalgliesh claims he read while sitting in a government office for four years doing nothing. Well, no I shouldn't say "nothing," Dalgliesh claims he made about $93,000-94,000 per year for "at most 10 days" of work per year. Unreal.

Make no mistake, what happened to investors as a result of the Crocus scandal is unacceptable and is quite sad; many people lost large sums of money. I'm not an expert on all the details behind Crocus, but in a nutshell the government was told the fund was going to be running into big problems, but officials like Premier Greg Selinger sat back and continued to let people keep investing in the black hole. 

But I did get a kick out of Dalgliesh keeping track of the novels he read and openly describing how he was employed to do absolutely nothing for years on end; such frankness is not expressed too often by bureaucrats. Yes, I know it's our money and we should be upset that his superiors would waste money so foolishly, but come on - a list of novels?!

Without further ado, here is the email that describes doing nothing and the list of novels (scross to the last three pages for the "do nothing" description and list of books - /media/Dalgliesh.pdf

(Note: I scanned the email the way it was received. I'm not sure why it looks like it's a cut and past job) 

UPDATE: After posting this blog post I realized I don't think I did a good enough job explaining why Jack Dalgliesh was in an office doing nothing for years on end. If you watch the CBC clip and read his emails, you'll learn he was a trained accountant with twenty years experience. However, after speaking out about Crocus internally, he suggests he was punted over to the "do nothing" office. Like many of us, the guy seems to have needed a pay cheque so he kept on reporting for work each day even though his superiors seem to have given him nothing to do.

For $93,000 per year and a great pension, few would turn that down.

So is it his fault he didn't do anything? I don't think it is. Ultimately this is a guy who seems to have tried to do the right thing. Instead of punting him around his superiors should have listened to him. At the very least, someone should have given him something to do in his new role.

Makes you wonder - how many other bureaucrats have been put in do nothing offices for speaking out?